TISCHBEIN, Johann Friedrich August
(b. 1750, Maastricht, d. 1812, Heidelberg)

Biography

German painter, part of a family of artists from Hesse which between the early 18th century and the late 19th produced 28 artists and artisans, a third of them women, who were active throughout Germany and elsewhere in Europe. The family's three most famous members are known as 'der Kasseler' (Johann Heinrich Tischbein I), 'der Leipziger'(Johann Friedrich August Tischbein) and 'der Neapolitaner' or 'Goethe Tischbein' (Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein).

Johann Friedrich August Tischbein (der Leipziger) was the nephew of Johann Heinrich Tischbein I. After initial study with his father, Johann Valentin Tischbein, and with his uncle, he studied in Paris (1772-77) with support from a patron, Graf Friedrich von Waldeck. He stayed in Rome from 1777 to 1779, where he was influenced by Anton Raphael Mengs and Heinrich Füger. In 1780 he became court painter to von Waldeck at Schloss Arolsen near Kassel.

By the late 1780s he had abandoned his early Rococo style and had adopted a sentimental form of Neo-classicism and a sensitive, proto-Romantic naturalism based on the work of such painters as George Romney, Gainsborough and Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun. His portrait of Herr von Chatelain (1791; Munich, Neue Pinakothek), which helped establish his lasting reputation as a portrait painter, attests to his eclectic approach. The young man's leisurely pose, dreamy expression and fashionable dress, and the outdoor setting reveal, moreover, the shift in social values from the dominance of the aristocracy to bourgeois society, with its greater concern with psychological characterization.

Friedrich Tischbein established himself as a portrait painter in Leipzig; he was a much sought after, fashionable portrait painter. From 1786 on, he frequently travelled to the Netherlands to carry out commissions.